Saturday, June 2, 2012

Project MALES - a New Hope for Latino Male Students

Due to the entrenchment of gynocentrism and the permissiveness of misandry in our colleges
and universities and the disproportionate influence that these institutions have
on our culture, education is one of the most difficult, yet most important,
areas to advocate equality for men and boys. Thus it beneficial to be aware of
developments in the academic world that work toward this ideal. Before I publish more content on what I call The War on Male
students, I would like to give credit to what I believe to be an
exception to the rule in academia by raising awareness of a team whose
compassion and understanding toward male students as a group has already
positively influenced the discourse on gender equality in public education.

Project MALES (Mentoring to Achieve Latino Educational Success) is a new program hosted by UT Austin’s Division of
Diversity and Community Engagement. It is directed by professor Victor Saenz,
whose is increasingly the nationally-recognized “go-to” authority on Latino
male underachievement in education. The approach of the program, which aims to eliminate
the cultural and structural barriers Latino males face in educational
achievement, is twofold: a research team, and a parallel research-based mentoring
program. What follows will largely be a first-hand report of two Project MALES
symposia I attended in June 2011 and May 2012.

I became
aware of Project MALES through a college friend of mine who eventually became a
member of the staff. Through this link I was able to get an insider perspective
on the nature of the group. Those at Project MALES are not Men’s Rights Activists.
They do not paint broad ideological pronouncements across the canvas of
historical human interaction, for example, by advocating the perspective that
both sexes were historically privileged and disadvantaged, each in different
ways. Nor are they NAACP activists.

This is why
attending the two symposia hosted by Project MALES was like a breath of fresh
air. For while I saw many who did focus on the needs of Latinos as people of
color, it was just as common to hear phrases like “underrepresented males” or “underachieving
males,” and to hear advocacy for Latino males as males. The first symposium,
which over two hundred attended, was primarily devoted to raising awareness of
the issues and establishing a common ground among faculty and academic
officials. Upon signing in, attendees were given folders and handouts which
contained graphs and other data on educational underachievement, classified by
sex and race, from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

According to
the NCES, Latinos are 42% of enrolled Hispanic undergraduates, and 39% of Hispanics
who earn degrees (73% of Latino students graduate from high school, compared to
77% of Latinas. In addition, “In 2008, among all races, Hispanic students from
16- to 24-year-olds had the highest high school dropout rate (19.9% males,
16.7% females).” The educational underachievement of Latinos is also of
economic concern to the general populace, given that, according to the 2010
Census Bureau, “Over the last decade Hispanics have accounted for most of the
nation’s growth – 56%.” These statistics were later displayed on a large screen
in UT Austin’s Union Ballroom and interpreted by the passionate Luis Ponjuan.
As he was mentioning how achievement gaps contribute to the socioeconomic
stratification of various demographics, I noticed he took time to stress that this
was a problem “among all races of men - including Black men, Hispanic men, and
even White men.”

Professor
Saenz set the tone of the event when he took the mic. While applauding the work
done for women and girls over the past decades in education, he also addressed
anti-male attitudes that had become prevalent in academia, including the belief
that any concern for the needs of male students, no matter how justified, would
somehow unjustly take away legitimate gains for females. “I believe there is
room in the discourse to address the needs of both sexes,” he said. “It is not
a zero-sum game.”

Alphonso
Rincon later spoke to the audience to represent his affiliate group, Fathers Active in Communities and Education (FACE), which advocates the greater
presence of male role models in lower education, where they are most strikingly
absent. Being more involved in Fathers’ Rights in 2011, I was hoping to see
some sort of acknowledgment of the concerns of the movement. Perhaps FACE would
advocate for more government assistance for non-custodial parents, who are
overwhelmingly male? Perhaps they would raise awareness of the barriers
non-custodial parents face in regard to parenting their children? This was not
the case, as FACE primarily works with fathers who are currently active in (i.e.
not yet excluded from) the family. Based on their presented work, however, FACE
has done much to vocalize the idea that male role models – men, in other words
– are every bit as capable of taking on parental roles traditionally held by
women.

The keynote
speaker was Shaun Harper, a well-respected and charismatic professor who authored
the National Black Male College Achievement Study, which the symposium program
cites as “the largest-ever empirical study of Black undergraduate men.” I was
unfortunately absent for much of his speech (I confess, I was eating Mexican
food and schmoozing in the dining area just outside the Union Ballroom), but managed
to attend the last portion, during which he declared that given its influence,
academia had a responsibility to work toward ending all forms of prejudice and
oppression, including racism, patriarchy, and (believe it or not) misandry.

The audience
was later asked to retire to the adjacent Union Quadrangle room, where we divided
into small groups and brainstormed about effective strategies for addressing
male underachievement. As a volunteer for Project MALES I was asked to be a note
taker for our small group, where I was to ask a set of pre-determined questions
provided by the Project MALES staff. One such
example follows:

“Many young men, but especially minority men, struggle to succeed
in higher education environments. Choose
a segment of the 'education pipeline' (ex: elementary school, high school,
community colleges, four-year colleges). Identify 3-5 key areas where men need
additional support, describe 3-5 initiatives that could help men succeed in
education, and identify key players who could help with these initiatives"

Here were some other great
questions note-takers were to ask the small groups:

1.“Your district has decided to create an all-male high
school OR an all-male college support program.
What would this program look like?
Describe the components that are most critical to making the high
school/program a success.

"Create a list of potential partners and their potential
contributions that could be leveraged to re-imagine Latino male success.

3. "Policy makers and educators often say that male
incarceration, particularly the imprisonment of Latino and Black men, is a
critical issue in America. Do you
agree/disagree, and why? What do you
think contributes to this high incarceration rate and what can schools,
communities, and businesses do to decrease the number of young Latino men who
are send to prison?"

The 2012
symposium was held at UT Austin’s Alumni Center. Since last year, Project MALES
had conducted research and interviews at numerous colleges and high schools and
presented their findings at conferences around the U.S. It also seemed their volunteers
had doubled in number. At this symposium attendees
were given twice the length of time between registration and the start of the
event to schmooze, and I took as much advantage of that as I could. It
was now that I became aware of their partnership with XY-Zone, a mentoring
program that promotes “job readiness services, support groups, mentors and
community service projects” for male students regardless of race, and advocates
a curriculum suited particularly for boys which incorporates differentiated
learning styles based on gender.

I was formally introduced to its coordinator Robert
Bachicha, who surprised me by lending me a copy of the XY curriculum and letting
me read it during the event. Due to a confidentiality agreement I cannot give
extensive details on its contents, but I can safely say it contained numerous
open-ended questions that allowed male students to explore their own ideas
about masculinity. While the possibility exists for an individual instructor to
adopt an Men’s Studies approach by answering these questions for students by
framing masculinity in negative terms, there did not seem to be any bias in
that direction in the curriculum itself.

I also spoke
with Janie Mendoza from Capital Idea, an organization that delivers financial
support for low-income adults seeking associates degrees, many of whom are people
of color. “We have problems recruiting males,” she said. “They start classes,
and then boom - someone offers them a $12 an hour job, and they’re gone. And
then they’re back after 6-7 months when that job dries up. They feel like they
can’t take the time to invest in a career. I think it’s an ‘I have to provide
for my family right now’ mentality.” She spoke that this was more common among
men, given that they are expected to be the primary breadwinners, and that a
proud, go-it-alone subculture of machismo also deterred young men from asking
for help or developing the necessary support networks to succeed academically.

When the
event began, Professor Saenz spoke again on the need for compassion for male
students, and reiterated that gender advocacy was not a zero-sum game. But this
time Professor Saenz brought down the
rhetorical hammer, indicting the academic establishment for knowing about the
problems faced by young men in education but failing to act. “I do not believe
that indictment is too strong a word, and I do not use that word lightly,” he
said. “What we are ultimately doing is diverting young men from paths of
success. Not enough of us are doing the work of researching this issue.” Equally
damning was research coordinator Sarah Rodriguez’s presentation, which
contained quotations from interviews of students, teachers and administrators
in schools around Texas. One administrator, when asked about the educational
crisis among Latino males in education, was quoted as saying, “We don’t
acknowledge it because to acknowledge something means that you have to do
something about it.” She also quoted interviews from Latino students who
reported feeling “out of place,” and cited not only the absence of support
structures within academia, but also the isolating pressures of machismo culture.

The keynote
speaker Judith Loredo, the Assistant Commissioner for the Texas Higher
Education Coordinating Board, opened by declaring that Hispanic educational achievement has not remained proportionate to their demographic growth, and
Texas must develop further initiatives to remain globally competitive
economically due to a projected 62% of jobs requiring some postsecondary
education by 2018. She also commented that while “most Hispanics enroll in
community and technical colleges, more than 50% leave the community college
system with no degree or certificate,” and listed several programs the THECB launched
programs to help Hispanics.

Her keynote
address, while compassionate and overflowing with data and advocacy on needed
changes for the well-being of economics and Hispanics, unfortunately addressed
little on the needs of male students, and to my knowledge she mentioned no initiatives
concerning male needs sponsored by the THECB. In Why Boys Fail,Richard Whitmire argues that the rates of U.S. educational achievement look
poor primarily because we are failing males. That gender gap cuts across racial
and class lines. This is increasingly understood on a grassroots level, and is
evident in the rhetoric of groups like Project MALES and XY-Zone, but in my
years in academia I have never seen it reflected in any initiatives sponsored
by the upper echelons of academic power, including and especially the
Department of Education. So long as the Boy Crisis in education is left
unaddressed by high-ranking institutions, comprehensive educational progress
will remain elusive.

In two short
years Project MALES has made more positive contributions than I could hope to
document here, and they have fought tooth and nail for every inch of turf they have
gained. When I first heard of the group I was concerned for its future. Many a
good-faith attempt to help men and boys has been shut down or marginalized,
while others have been hijacked or perverted from their original courses to
suit political conveniences or misandric prejudices, and subsequently put to
destructive ends. If Project MALES and its partners remain true to their
mission to help male students by continuing to understand the pressures they
face and responding with compassion, they stand a better chance of making not
only local but national change. If anyone in is interested in advocacy for Latinos
in education, and especially if you live in Texas, I encourage you to support Project
MALES. Great minds, and more importantly great hearts, are its driving force. I
wish them all the best.